Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD V2

£160/$160 (1TB) https://shop.westerndigital.com

This is not Sandisk’s top-of-the-range portable SSD – that honour goes to the Extreme Pro Portable SSD V2 (see right), but this non-pro version is still the one to go for. That’s because almost no computer currently available can fully utilize the extra speed offered by the Extreme Pro, so in real-world use it’s barely faster than this SSD.

Sandisk quotes a peak read speed of 1050MB/S for the Extreme Portable SSD. We were able to verify this claim with the Crystaldiskmark storage benchmark app, though achieving such speed in real-world file transfers is unlikely. Despite testing with a fast laptop, we could ‘only’ manage a peak 780MB/S when reading a large video file and 564MB/S when writing it to the drive. Still, that’s fast, and image transfer speeds of 693/496MB/S read/write are equally top. It should also be noted that a portable SSD will rarely perform as fast in actual file transfers as in a software benchmark.

Capacities come in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB but it’s the 1TB option that makes most sense unless you definitely need more space, as prices pretty much double in line with capacity.

PROS Unparalleled speed; small and rugged; competitively priced

CONS Max speed requires very fast computer; 2TB capacity very expensive